Week 4 Story: The Trial of Niobe

Niobe opened her eyes to find herself in a strange place that looked like an empty court room. The light shining through the windows was tinted red and she could hear something in the distance that sounded like tortured screams. Suddenly, the doors burst open and in strode a man that she immediately knew as Hades, King of the Underworld. He was dressed in robes so black that it felt like you were staring into an abyss when you looked at them, and his equally as dark hair contrasted with his pale, almost translucent, skin. The god stepped up to the bench, unrolled a scroll, and began to read from it.

“Niobe, daughter of Tantalus and wife of Amphion, now that you have died and escaped your rock prison, it is time for you to be judged and receive your punishment in the afterlife.” Hades booming voice echoed through the room, “You are being charged with fourteen counts of reckless child endangerment and fourteen counts of manslaughter. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty, your Honor.”

“Then let the trial begin!” Hades bellowed. The doors at the back of the court room burst open again and in walked a small crowd of people. Leto, the goddess Niobe had insulted so many years ago, strode up to the front and sat at the table next to Niobe’s. Her children, Artemis and Apollo, sat behind her and other miscellaneous gods filled in the rest of the seats. Then in a complete surprise twist that no one saw coming, Niobe’s children walked in and sat in as the jury for their mother’s trial.

“Now unlike your stupid mortal court, I will be the one asking the questions and I will be the one deciding your fate, Niobe.” Hades announced. “Of course, the jury does help me make the decision on the severity of the punishment, however with a jury made up of your children lets hope they are lenient, but also considering your actions are the reason for their deaths… I wouldn’t count on it.”

“My dear brother, I would like to call my son, Apollo, as my first witness.” Leto smiled sweetly as she said this.

“Objection! This entire thing is a conflict of interest and will lead to a direct bias against me!” Niobe stood up and yelled.

“Sweetheart, everything we Olympians do is a conflict of interest, if you haven’t noticed, so sit down and don’t make this worse for yourself.” Hades replied. “Now Apollo, please tell the jury about the day Niobe insulted your mother and my sister, Leto.”

“Uh well it was a few decades ago, so of course I remember it like it was yesterday. I created a beautiful sunrise, one of my top ten of all time, man. I bet my sunrise is what stirred that divine impulse in that chick, Manto, because right after that she was telling everyone to put laurels in their hair and bring offerings and stuff to the temple in honor of Mom, my sister, and I. It was super awesome, but then this lady who looked like she would totally name drop Zeus, ruined the whole thing.” Apollo answered in his surfer dude way.

“Do you see that woman in the court room?”

“Yeah, actually I do. She looks a little different, her face is kind of puffy almost like she had been crying for the last half a century.” Apollo answered pointing at Niobe.

“The witness has identified Niobe as the horrible woman who stopped the wonderful, spontaneous day of celebration!” Hades dramatically told the jury, “Apollo, please tell us what happened next.”

“Uh yeah this lady- I mean Niobe- just starts ragging on Mom and saying how much better she is because she has fourteen children and she is super rich and how Zeus is her great-grandfather. Told you she would name drop Zeus! Anyways, she tells everyone she should be worshipped for being a great mother instead of my mom and sent all the people away from the celebration. Well nobody messes with my mom so my sis and I decide it’s time to teach Niobe a lesson.”

“And how did you teach her this lesson?” Hades inquired.

“By shooting and killing all seven of her sons,” He answered sheepishly.

His answer caused some restlessness among the jury so Hades thanked Apollo for being a witness and dismissed him from the stand, but before he left he called out to the jury, “Oh yeah I almost forgot! To the one dude who prayed for me not to kill you? I totally heard you man and was going to let you live but I had already shot the arrow so that one was my bad.”

As Apollo returned to his seat, Leto called Artemis to the stand as her second and final witness.

“So, Artemis, Apollo killed Niobe’s sons why then did you kill her daughters? Did Niobe not learn her lesson?” Hades inquired.

“We were totally going to stop after the sons and spare the daughters.” She told the jury, her eyes pleading for them to believe her, “We were so moved by the sight of all of you mourning the loss of your brothers and sons that we thought we had gotten through to you, but then your mother screwed it up.”

“How did Niobe mess this up?” Hades asked.

“As she was begging and crying for us to spare you she turned to the sky and asks us where our victory was because she still had more than us.”

Everything in the room just stopped for a moment as everyone let that sink in.

“Wait... so as she is asking Leto for a favor, she also insults her?” Hades asks with a confused look on his face.

“That’s exactly what happened.” Artemis replied.

“So how did you respond?”

“I shot and killed her daughters and then as Niobe was crying over the bodies of her children and her husband, who had been driven to kill himself because of all of this, Mom turned her into granite on the mountain side where she stayed until she showed up here.” Artemis answered.

“Okay that’s it! This trial is over! I have made my decision! I do not want you here in my Underworld so I am turning you back into granite for all of eternity and that is final!” Hades announced.

The next time Niobe opened her eyes she was surrounded by granite and had a nice mountain view.

(Photo of the Weeping Rock, also known as Niobe's Rock, from flickr)

Author’s Note: This was a pretty accurate summary of the myth of Niobe and how her pride got the best of her. The original of course is much longer and not near as funny as mine. I also changed all the gods from their Roman names to their Greek ones because that is just easier for me to keep up with and I feel like it would be easier for yall too. I was originally going to have another god commentate on the whole thing, but I stumbled across the afterlife trial idea as I was looking though the story ideas and I decided that this would be a much more interesting way to summarize the story. I also wanted to make the characters more causal and use more modern language because I feel that the formal way some of these myths are written really take the humanness out of the stories, therefore making it hard to see them from different perspectives. I just hope you guys all thought Niobe was as annoying as I did and enjoyed her trial.

Bibliography. “Niobe Rejects Latona” from Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline. Web Source.